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Life Of Photographer Lee Miller Illuminated In 'The Age Of Light'

Whitney Scharer's "The Age Of Light" focuses on the evolution of model and accredited photojournalist Lee Miller during World War II.
"The Age of Light," by Whitney Scharer. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

You may have never heard of Lee Miller.

Author Whitney Scharer’s debut novel, “The Age of Light,” is based on the life of Miller, who went from fashion model and muse of photographer Man Ray, to her own career as a studio photographer and one of the few accredited female war correspondents to cover World War II.

“I was initially drawn to her confidence and ambition. I just found her to be this incredibly modern woman,” Scharer says. “But as I learned about her, what I was most taken with, was this fragility that was underneath the surface of her confidence, that came from all of these traumas that she endured in childhood and all of the subsequent objectification by men — her father, fashion photographers, Man Ray, and that I think is what makes her such a complex and interesting character.”

Although “The Age of Light” is not a biography, Scharer dives into the real relationship between Miller and Man Ray, a much older and famed photographer, and the traumas that Miller endured from childhood into her adult years. Scharer says Miller suffered from undiagnosed PTSD.

“She was an alcoholic. She was probably clinically depressed, and she was just a woman who had such ambition and such potential. And then you kind

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